Earlier this year, the Orange County Water District (OCWD) was recognized for “superb financial accountability and reporting of its fiscal year” by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). This latest accolade is yet another in a long list of awards racked up by OCWD, including being named the Public Water Agency of the Year at the 2008 International Desalination Association/Global Water Intelligence conference in London and Public Water Agency of the Year by the International Private Water Association and American Membrane Technology Association. Additionally OCWD was awarded the 2008 Stockholm Industry Water Award at the 2008 World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. The OCWD’s innovative Ground Water Replenishment (GWR) System has also received multiple honors, including 2008 UV Engineering Project of the Year Award from the International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA) with the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement award in 2009.
Water Efficiency was one of the first publications to take an in depth look at the OCWD’s long-term water strategy plan, which includes not only GWR, but water reclamation and state-of-the-art water treatment. In our 2008 feature “The Ultimate Recycling Program,” we introduced you to OCWD’s new $490-million wastewater reclamation facility—designed to treat 70 million gallons of wastewater effluent and turn it into drinking water. As that article aptly stated, OCWD’s reclamation facility is “considered to be ‘the world’s largest, most modern reclamation plant,’ [and] its genesis, development, and future operation provides a case study in successful, large-scale, long-term water resource planning.”
Recently, the OCWD’s YouTube channel (“OCWDwaternews”) debuted a video tour of the Groundwater Replenishment System including still photos, a clip of OCWD Process Engineer Mehul Patel’s talking tour, and interviews with OCWD guests.
For more on the Water Efficiency’s coverage of OCWD: